cj#683> “China vs. Globalization” 1/3

Dear cj,
About two months ago the first version of this article was posted. Since
then it's been refined by feedback and updated into a full article. Other
parts will follow.
rkm
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Begin - "China vs. Globalization" - in three parts
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China vs. Globalization
- the Final War and the Dark Millennium
Copyright 1997 by Richard K. Moore
8 June 1997 - •••@••.•••
as published in New Dawn magazine
July-August 1997
Prolog - Hi-tech arsenal under fast-track development by US
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The Future of Warfare - The Economist (8 March 1997) - delves into the
subject of hi-tech warfare, of which Desert Storm, we are told, was
but a primitive prototype. The most advanced elements are still
only in the idea stage, but others are well along in development, or
already deployed, and the whole program is on a fast-track priority
for the US military:
"The world is in the early stages of a new military revolution...
"...over Bosnia the Americans have deployed JSTARS, a ground-
surveillance system in the sky: a single screen can display, in
any weather, the position and type of every vehicle within an
area 200 kilometres (125 miles) square...
"The revolution in military affairs revolves around three
advances. The first is in gathering intelligence. Sensors in
satellites, aircraft or unmanned aircraft can monitor virtually
everything going on in an area. The second is in processing
intelligence. Advanced command, control, communication and
computing systems, known as C4, make sense of the data gathered
by the sensors and display it on screen. They can then assign
particular targets to missiles, tanks or whatever. The third is
in acting on all this intelligence in particular, by using long-
range precision strikes to destroy targets. Cruise missiles,
guided by satellite, can hit an individual building many
hundreds of miles away...
"The Pentagon already has, or is developing, most of the
technologies required for space weapons. For instance it has
just awarded a $l.l billion contract for an airborne laser to
hit ballistic missiles. if that technology works, it could be
adapted for a satellite...
"Aircraft carriers, like other surface ships, risk being sunk by
cruise missiles. Some will be replaced by 'arsenal ships',
semi-submersible, stealthy barges, carrying hundreds of missiles
but few sailors..."
The technologies mentioned above may not sound strikingly
futuristic - after all GPS services are available commercially. But
employing them as part of a total system, as we saw in Desert Storm,
can provide very effective "control of theater," neutralizing
weapons and defenses of the enemy, while permitting one's own weapon
systems to have free play throughout the field of battle. One
could imagine someone touching a screen in the Pentagon, causing a
cruise missile to be launched from a "stealthy barge," and
destroying a specific target on the other side of the world - with all
the action displayed up-to-date on the screen via secure digital
satellite links.
These kind of information-intensive systems are as much software as
hardware - permitting radical system advances to be deployed very
rapidly, overnight in some cases. One must take seriously the
Economist's claim that we are indeed in the early stages of a "new
military revolution."
What's the point of this arsenal?
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More important than the technology details are the why questions...
what is all this for?...why the urgency? The Economist's own answers
to these questions are both brief and naive on all points:
"This embryonic revolution, unlike the development of nuclear
weapons, has not emerged in response to any particular threat to
the United States or its allies. It has come about because it
is there, that is, because generals want to play with new
technologies in case a future threat emerges. In that it may
resemble Blitzkrieg, which was based on the technologies of the
1920's, when defence budgets were declining and there seemed
little prospect of another world war."
During the Manhattan Project, the scientists developing the first
"atom bomb" were told Germany was making rapid progress on its own
atomic research, and thus the Los Alamos team did believe they were
rushing against the clock to protect against an enemy atomic
threat. But allied intelligence knew the Nazis were stymied in
their efforts, and lied to the scientists in order to create a false
sense of urgency and keep the project going at full steam. Some of
the scientists had serious moral reservations about working on the
bomb, and the project might have been in jeopardy if the fiction of
an imminent German atomic threat was not maintained. But fiction it
was, from the perspective of top-level US strategists.
The strategic motivation for urgent development of The Bomb lies
elsewhere than Germany. In the film Day After Trinity, narrated by
Robert Oppenheimer, he matter-of-factly explains how Hiroshima and
Nagasaki had been carefully spared bombing during the war so that
they could serve as clean, live-target test sites for the two new
types of weapons (U-235 and Plutonium). Following the Hiroshima
bombing, the Japanese sent out urgent communiques expressing a
desire to discuss surrender - these were blocked by US intelligence in
order that the second test could be carried out. And as planned,
when the medical inspectors descended on the rubble, they knew that
all the bizarre injuries and diseases they cataloged could be
credited to The Bomb.
So in truth, The Bomb was not developed in response to a comparable
threat, but rather, quite simply, for the enhanced geopolitical
advantage which it afforded. The urgency, as well, did not arise
from a threat, but rather from a desire to carry out the tests while
there was still an enemy the weapons could be deployed against. The
bombings, too, were carried out for reasons other than those found
in naive historical accounts.
The official party line - that those particular bombings were
necessary to shorten the war - does not stand up to analysis. It
ignores the fact that the first bomb already cracked Japanese
resolve, and that a military target could have been attacked first,
with escalation to a city left as an option. On the other hand, the
bombings - as carried out - did accomplish two other objectives: they
allowed the effects on people and buildings to be observed (of both
weapon types), and they demonstrated to the Russians and allies
alike that the US had the stomach to use these new weapons in anger
against civilians.
These objectives related to the postwar geopolitical situation - not
to the defeat of Japan. When the cover-story smokescreens have been
all cleared away, it becomes apparent that the Manhattan Project -
taken in its entirety, including the two tests - was designed to give
the US a strong postwar geopolitical advantage: the possession of
an unmatched, proven weapon of mass destruction, and a world which
knew the US would use the weapon if deemed necessary. Indeed, as was
revealed by Daniel Ellsberg, the US has used the serious threat of
nuclear attack some half dozen times or more in the postwar era (eg,
Khe Shan in Vietnam) to compel submission to US tactical demands.
Just as an armed-robber has legally "used a gun" even if he doesn't
fire it, so the US has been "using" its nuclear arsenal for the very
purpose for which it was designed: to enhance and extend Uncle Sam's
ability to control the postwar world.
Also contrary to the Economist's theories, Germany's development of
blitzkrieg weapons was not a case of "playing" with new technologies
and was not carried out with "little prospect" of another war.
William Manchester tells the story in The Arms of Krupp: beginning
in the 1920's, a select team of engineers, with the connivance of
German intelligence and long before Hitler, took on the top-secret
task of designing a suite of advanced military hardware that was
aimed at achieving military superiority in a specific time-window
(late 1930's, early 1940's) - during which period Germany was to
regain its honor and further its expansionist ambitions. Krupp
supported Hitler in his election campaign, and became Fuhrer of
industry in the Third Reich. The scheme came close to working, and
the weapons systems can hardly be blamed for Germany's eventual
defeat.
There is a reason so much space has been devoted to these issues in
an article whose topic is China. If we want to understand the
strategic significance of America's current rushed development of a
next-generation weapons system, then the Economist is right: we
should compare it to previous similar developments. In both
examples the Economist cited, it turns out the programs were
designed to achieve military superiority over known future
adversaries, in an anticipated future conflict scenario. The
anticipated scenarios did come to pass, and the weapons systems
served their objectives rather well. Contrary to the Economist's
off-the-shelf historical assumptions, these were examples of well
thought-out projects, in pursuit of real strategic goals.
Similarly as well, permit me to suggest, America's current hi-tech-
warfare developments do not arise primarily from the play of
generals nor even the profit-seeking of arms developers. As with
both the A-bomb and Nazi blitzkrieg, what we are seeing with hi-tech
warfare is the preparation of a weapons suite crafted with
particular - and once more not defensive - missions in mind.
Missions for the arsenal: (1) enforcing globalization
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The end of the Cold War, to state the obvious, has created an
entirely new geopolitical situation. In the immediate postwar era
the primary geopolitical reality had been the rivalry between the
two superpowers; in the post-cold-war era there is not, as yet
anyway, any similar rivalry between more-or-less comparable powers.
Instead, the US and its NATO allies have become, on a collaborative
basis, the world's sole dominant military power.
With UN resolutions serving as the source of legitimacy, a
multilateral system for policing international "order" has been
adopted by the Western powers - the old days of competitive, sphere-
of-influence imperialism are long dead. The evolution of the new
multilateral policing system can be traced in the headlines of the
nineties - in the hot spots of Iraq, Bosnia, and Albania...
Desert Storm, although almost entirely an American operation, was
carried out under UN approval and no expense was spared recruiting
and publicizing participation by allies.
In Bosnia, non-US NATO troops carried the multilateral flag most of
the time, but the US joined in at a critical moment and provided
cruise-missile support which was decisive in assuring a military
outcome deemed acceptable to the US and its allies.
In Albania we see a multilateral intervention without direct US
military involvement and which has, for the first time, an open-
ended military mandate. Italy took the lead by suggesting that
individual Western powers volunteer to join in an Albanian
intervention. The troops - primarily from Italy and Greece - don't have
their hands tied by restrictive rules of engagement. From The
Militant (28 April 1997):
"The occupying troops have been ordered to shoot 'if they face
dangerous situations.' The plan for the...intervention, drafted
in Rome by the participating governments, lists potential
'dangerous situations.' Among them are 'involvement in clashes
between government forces and the rebels and attacks by armed
civilians that may attempt to appropriate the humanitarian aid.'
Among the 'potential problems' that the [participants] expect
are 'planted mines at regional roads and the chance of facing
guerrilla warfare.'
"Italian Adm. Guido Venturoni, who is commanding the operation,
told reporters April 14 that the force 'will not go into Albania
as the blue helmets went into Bosnia, where they were
constrained to stand by during grave acts of violence without
intervening because the rules of engagement did not permit it.'"
Thus, under the auspices of the UN and NATO, the world now has a de
facto official policing force. The force is of, by, and for the
dominant Western powers, and there is no effective court of appeal
to protect the sovereignty of any country this police force decides
to invade. To the rebels in Albania, and for the Third World in
general, there would seem to be little difference between this new
regime and traditional European imperialism. Instead of
competitive, sphere-of-interest imperialism, there is now a
collaborative arrangement - but the result is a system where the Euro-
American powers take it upon themselves to to intervene when and
where they desire, maintaining global "order" according to their own
criteria.
With ongoing tension in the Muslim world, chronic civil war in black
Africa, near chaos in the former Soviet sphere, and a rising sense
of activism on the part of the new policing partners, the prospects
are for collective intervention - or the threat of same - to become
routine, rather than for emergency use only.
This policing regime is the military branch of globalization. The
US and the European powers make up the multilateral force and they
are also the prime instigators of globalization. As the
legislative/administrative branch of globalism (WTO, GATT, IMF, etc)
consolidates its dominion over planning the world's future, the
military branch is coming online just in time to assure that the
globalist designs will not be thwarted by upstart Third-World
peoples who have more nationalist or socialist agendas than
globalism finds acceptable.
Some readers may find this assessment a bit harsh - after all, haven't
NATO interventions been for humanitarian purposes? To be sure, the
humanitarian angle has been emphasized in the media, and it is
humanitarian sympathies that create support in Western populations
for the interventions. But a close look at the interventions - how
they were carried out, their timing, which local parties were
favored - reveals that humanitarian concerns played very little role,
and that the real purpose has been to promote regimes that are
favorable to globalism (ie international capital investment.) The
much-delayed intervention in Bosnia, for example, could hardly have
been worse-timed to reduce human suffering, but succeeded quite well
in promoting the territorial gains of the Western-preferred Croat
side.
The globalist program for the Third World has become very clear.
IMF guidelines require explicitly that social spending be cut, as
part of focusing Third-World finances on debt servicing. Meanwhile,
corporate employers pay starvation wages to their Third-World
workers and offer very little economic stability - moving their
plants whenever they find a better deal elsewhere. As if that
weren't enough, the free-trade agreements wreak havoc with Third-
World economies, as internal markets are lost to cheap imports, and
export markets become unpredictable. The squeeze on Third-World
peoples is immense, and globalism - both in policy and practice - seems
intent only on tightening the screws still further.
This is a sure-fire formula for social unrest, and insurgencies of
one stripe or another are in fact already widespread, as we see in
Albania, Mexico, Columbia, Peru, and elsewhere. As the globalist
squeeze continues, one can only expect the constituency of these
insurgences to increase.
There is a common focus for the discontent: neoliberalism, the IMF,
corporate policies, and repressive governments subservient to
outside interests. International capitalism itself - and its
globalist agenda - is increasingly being perceived as the root cause
of the troubles. Whereas in the old communist world anti-capitalism
was a subject of public indoctrination and rhetoric, in much of the
Third World it is becoming a heartfelt general sentiment.
Keeping the populace under control has become the primary occupation
of many Third World governments, and sophisticated arms and training
are routinely supplied by Western powers to facilitate this mission -
increasing the local debt burden in the process.
But when an insurgency grows to civil-war proportions - as in Bosnia,
Albania or Zaire - it then shows up on the globalist radar screens,
indicating that elite global leaders (euphemistically referred to as
the international community) had better formulate a tactical
approach to the situation, and alert the media to begin producing
whatever emotional news stories (riot scenes, suffering refugees,
strutting dictators, whatever) are appropriate to generating support
for the chosen tactics - tactics appropriate to the scenario...
If there is disagreement as to which side to back (as in Zaire)
then the tactic might be to let the locals fight it out, making
money on arms sales in the process. In this case the media's
job is to paint the situation as confusing, with no clear good
guys and bad guys - too messy to "entangle ourselves" in.
If an unfavored side gains more territory than the West deems
appropriate, as did the Serbs in Bosnia, then the tactic might
be to call in the multilateral force to tilt the battlefield
toward a more global-friendly side, as we saw with Croatia. In
this case the media's job is to demonize the unfavored side with
regular atrocity stories, while portraying the favored side as
victims.
Finally, if a general popular uprising threatens to overthrow a
global-friendly government, as in Albania, the tactic may be to
rush to the support of the government, beef up its security
infrastructure, and make sure the rebels get the message that
their antics won't be tolerated. In this case, the media's job
is to sensationalize scenes of anarchy and disorder, to portray
the operations of the multilateral force as being "defensive"
actions against "unruly mobs," and to leave out mention of the
political content of the uprising.
It should be clear that the media can easily spin the news coverage
in any direction called for by the interventionist agenda. In
Bosnia, for example, the Croats could have been demonized just as
easily as the Serbs - the Croats practiced large-scale ethnic
cleansing, raped and pillaged, and carried out mass executions of
civilians; they also provided excellent demon sound-bites with their
overt fascist rhetoric and nazi salutes - but the camera goes where
it's directed to go, and the Serbs have socialist leanings.
Elite corporate interests openly control the major news distribution
channels, own much of the media outright, set the overall globalist
agenda, control the flow of investments and loans to the Third
World, are the major players in the international arms business, and
have intimate ties with the Western governments and intelligence
services which set the agenda of the multilateral force. It should
not be at all surprising that news coverage, official
pronouncements, and interventionist operations are all coordinated
smoothly so that when intervention occurs, it seems natural and
inevitable - perhaps even too little and too late - to the general
public.
So we can expect the multilateral force to be used wherever the
perpetrators of globalism see fit - the media can always find material
to paint the picture as required to achieve popular (and UN)
acquiescence in whatever missions are proposed. The only danger to
this well-polished military/media policing scheme is the spectre of
friendly casualties - when Western boys start coming home in body
bags, non-interventionist sentiment can be expected to arise
spontaneously, putting the operation on the defensive in the media,
and perhaps causing domestic political difficulties of all sorts.
Minimizing Western casualties is a strategic political necessity to
the globalist planners, and this ties back in to the significance of
next-generation hi-tech weaponry.
The task of global management can be expected to involve conflicts
of various sizes, from anti-"terrorist" operations (Tripoli
bombing), to brushfire civil wars (Bosnia), to restructuring of
"renegade" regimes (Grenada, Panama) - all the way up to full scale
wars (Desert Storm and worse). To handle flexibly this wide range
of conflicts - and without sacrificing too many of "our boys" - one can
understand why the US needs its multi-faceted, hi-tech, C4-based
arsenal. The US will most likely specialize as the heavy artillery
of the multilateral force, to be brought in when only the latest
weaponry can do the job without major risk to multilateral
personnel.
But why does this arsenal need to be upgraded with such urgency?
Isn't it already far ahead of all comers? Didn't Iraq (which had a
highly-rated military) find itself totally immobilized by the
weapons the US already had available in the early nineties? Who is
the anticipated adversary, and what is the anticipated scenario,
which could explain the strategic sense behind this intensive
buildup?
One thing is clear, and that is America's determination to upgrade
its military prerogatives on the world stage. A trial balloon was
sent up not that long ago whose aim was to add nuclear capability to
the internationally-approved war chest. I refer, of course, to
Libya and its purported biological warfare plant, a plant which
seems, significantly, to no longer be of serious concern. If that
balloon had not met with international alarm, Libya might well have
become the next in the sequence of America's field-test blitzkrieg
deployments - this time bringing tactical nukes (precise and clean?...
but of course) into the arsenal. Once that precedent is achieved,
by whatever means, tactical nukes will, presumably, be thereafter a
routine tactical option, albeit used reservedly, of the multilateral
force.
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End part 1 of 3 - "China vs. Globalization"
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